Claim · 1858 · Brandreth's Vegetable Universal Pills
All disease arises from a single cause, impurity of the blood, and Brandreth's Vegetable Universal Pills cure every complaint by purging that impurity through the bowels.
Dan King’s 1858 Quackery Unmasked records the claim in Brandreth’s own advertising terms: that he had discovered a single cause of all disease, the impurity of the blood, and a single sure remedy for it. This is a mechanism-only claim, asserting a single cause and a single cure; the attached record contains no controlled demonstration of either. King disputes the theory and calls Brandreth’s enterprise “the mighty farce,” so the Claim is recorded as refuted.
Appears in
Sources
- Quackery Unmasked — King, Dan, M.D. Quackery Unmasked: A Consideration of the Most Prominent Empirical Schemes of the Present Time, with an Enumeration of Some of the Causes Which Contribute to Their Support. Boston: printed by David Clapp, 1858. Chapter XXII ("The Press"), pp. 248-253, and Chapter XXVII ("Nostrum Recommendations"), pp. 293-296.
- The Doctrine of Purgation, Curiosities from Ancient and Modern Literature — Brandreth, B[enjamin], M.D., comp. The Doctrine of Purgation, Curiosities from Ancient and Modern Literature: A Collection of Quotations on the Use of Purgatives, from Hippocrates, and Other Medical Writers, Covering a Period of Over Two Thousand Years, Proving Purgation is the Corner-stone of all Curatives. 2nd ed. New York: Baker & Godwin, Printers, 1871. Wellcome Collection, shelfmark IJP, digitized copy b24854797.